User-oriented software design

Author: Konstantin
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-05-01
Features: The rapid development of information technology (IT) in recent years, centered around software, and its widespread application in all aspects of social life have led to a qualitative change in the composition of IT product users. The user base has shifted from primarily IT professionals to the general public. In this context, usability has become a critical factor determining the success or failure of IT applications. Usability, a relatively unfamiliar concept to many people in China, is an important quality indicator for interactive IT products/systems, including computer software and hardware, websites, information appliances, and instruments. It refers to whether a product is effective, easy to learn, efficient, memorable, error-free, and satisfactory to users, essentially asking whether users can complete their tasks using the product, how efficient they are, and how they feel about the experience. It is essentially the product quality as seen from the user's perspective, the core of product competitiveness, and directly determines the actual effectiveness of product use. Since the 1980s, usability has gained attention in developed countries such as North America, Europe, and Japan, giving rise to usability engineering as a hot topic in both industry and academia. Usability Engineering is a development methodology for interactive IT products/systems. Building on traditional IT development methods, it incorporates methods from various fields such as psychology, human factors engineering, industrial design, anthropology, and sociology, emphasizing a human-centered approach to design and development. Over the past 20 years, extensive industrial practices have proven that usability engineering is an effective way to ensure and improve product usability quality, addressing the neglect of human factors in conventional development methods. Since the 1990s, it has been widely adopted in the IT industry abroad. In recent years, to practically apply the human-centered philosophy in development practices, the field of usability engineering has proposed and implemented various distinctive methods. The user-centered design method introduced in this book is one of the important representatives. Usability engineering is a relatively new field in China, but the rapid development of domestic informatization, the international and domestic competitive pressures faced by the Chinese IT industry, and the process of China transforming from an IT manufacturing powerhouse to an IT powerhouse all demand a qualitative improvement in our design and development capabilities, requiring us to have thousands of usability engineering practitioners. The journey ahead is arduous, and we are delighted to introduce this book to Chinese readers, especially software design and development professionals. We hope this book can guide and help more people in China enter this promising field of usability engineering, master and apply this advanced methodology, and design and develop more usable products that meet user needs. This book was translated by Liu Zhengjie, Chen Junliang, Zhang Haiting, and Zhang Liping from the EU Usability China Center at Dalian Maritime University (http://usability.dlmu.edu.cn). Part 1 (Chapters 1-3), Part 2 (Chapters 4-6), and the preface and back cover were translated by Liu Zhengjie; Part 3 (Chapters 7-9) and Part 6 (Chapters 19-21) were translated by Chen Junliang; Part 4 (Chapters 10-15) was translated by Zhang Haiting; and Part 5 (Chapters 16-18), the appendix, and the author bio were translated by Zhang Liping. Liu Zhengjie reviewed and proofread the entire translation. This book is a classic work that won the Jolt Award from the U.S. Software Development Magazine in 1999. It primarily introduces a model and methodology for user-centered software development, helping programmers create more usable software that allows users to complete their tasks more easily and efficiently. The two authors of this book have extensive experience in software engineering practice and management and are recognized as authorities in software development human factors. They are internationally renowned consultants, trainers, and authors. In the book, they not only provide good design guidelines but also guide readers step by step through a systematic software development process. Through numerous software application examples and case analyses, the authors describe what is feasible and what is practically valuable in practice, making the book highly practical. The book is concise in language, insightful in argumentation, and well-structured, making it suitable for various computer software and application designers and developers. It also holds significant reference value for students in computer-related fields and software engineering programs at universities.